U.S. authorities seized the VLCC Skipper under a federal court warrant in an operation that involved the U.S. Coast Guard, two helicopters from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, and U.S. Marines. Officials say the takeover complied with U.S. and international law despite objections from some lawmakers and foreign officials.
The tanker, loaded with oil subject to U.S. sanctions, is being routed to Galveston, Texas, where both the vessel and its cargo will enter U.S. forfeiture proceedings. The ship, formerly named Adisa, has been on U.S. sanctions lists since 2022 for participating in an illicit oil-smuggling network tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.
Skipper is officially registered to Triton Navigation Corp., a Marshall Islands-registered company, and managed by Nigeria’s Thomarose Global Ventures Ltd. Its actual ownership is structured through opaque entities linked to so-called shadow fleets that have been associated with Iran-related smuggling and sanctions evasion.
Despite prior U.S. Treasury sanctions, the Skipper is reported to have run Venezuelan and Iranian oil for about three years. Although it flew a Guyanese flag, U.S. officials say its Guyanese registration was not legitimate; under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a vessel without valid nationality can be considered stateless. The Skipper reportedly delivered cargoes to Cuba where intermediaries in Asia allegedly “laundered” the oil. The cargo aboard the seized ship is estimated at roughly $100 million. The tanker itself, a roughly 333-meter very large crude carrier (VLCC) displacing in the neighborhood of 300,000 deadweight tons, would typically be valued in the tens of millions; market estimates for a 20-year-old VLCC commonly run $80–$90 million, though opinions vary.
Like all large commercial ships, the Skipper was required to operate an Automatic Identification System (AIS), which broadcasts a vessel’s identity, position, speed and heading via VHF and is also collected by low-earth-orbit satellites. AIS is central to maritime safety and tracking but can be tampered with: transponders can be switched off and position reports can be falsified. U.S. authorities say Skipper repeatedly reported false AIS locations—sometimes thousands of miles from its true position—and turned off its transponder to hide ports of call or to carry out ship-to-ship transfers.
Detection of such spoofing comes from cross-referencing satellite detections with vessel AIS reports. Commercial tracking firms use algorithms to flag mismatches and other behavior patterns consistent with sanctions evasion; the U.S. government purchases and uses these intelligence products in enforcement actions. Those tracking efforts likely contributed to the Skipper’s earlier listing and to the decision to seize the vessel now.
Following the Skipper’s capture, the U.S. added sanctions on six additional VLCCs tied to three nephews of Cilia Flores, the wife of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Two of those nephews were previously convicted in the U.S. on drug charges and later freed in a prisoner exchange. The newly sanctioned tankers include the White Crane, Kiara M., H. Constance, Lattafa, Monique and Tamia.
This enforcement action follows earlier U.S. moves: in 2020 the U.S. seized roughly 1.1 million barrels of Iranian fuel from four vessels bound for Venezuela, and in 2014 it seized the MV Morning Glory in a high-profile case. Data from intelligence firm Kpler show that between January 2024 and July 2025 it identified 261 vessels that spoofed AIS prior to being sanctioned; of those, 61 were sanctioned within three to six months and 59 within six to nine months, while many others remained unsanctioned.
If only the most conspicuous offenders—frequently those with ties to terrorism—are sanctioned, and only a handful of tankers are seized, much of the so-called ghost fleet can continue operating with limited interference. That operational space helps regimes such as Venezuela and Iran, and enablers like Cuba, to sustain funding streams for criminal networks, terrorist proxies and entrenched insiders.
The seizure of the Skipper appears likely to be just the tip of a much larger clandestine oil-smuggling iceberg.
Stephen Bryen, senior Asia Times correspondent and former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense. First published in the newsletter Weapons and Strategy; republished with permission.
